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Diane Sullivan sits in front of the mural painted on her business, Naples Beach and Bay Realty, in the Bayshore Arts District of Naples on Monday, April 2, 2018. The Bayshore Community Redevelopment Agency is contesting the guidelines for two murals in the area, including this one, during a meeting Tuesday.
Nicole Raucheisen/Naples Daily News

Amanda Jaron stands in front of the mural painted on her business, A. Jaron Fine Jewelry, in the Bayshore Arts District of Naples on Monday, April 2, 2018. The mural is being contested by The Bayshore Community Redevelopment Agency during its meeting Tuesday.
Nicole Raucheisen/Naples Daily News

The Anchor Bar and Lounge has it's name and nautical-themed accents painted along it's facade in the Bayshore Arts District of Naples, Florida, as seen on Monday, April 2, 2018. Two other murals in the area are being contested by The Bayshore Community Redevelopment Agency during a meeting on Tuesday.
Nicole Raucheisen/Naples Daily News

A petition signed by more than 900 Naples residents has two emphatic words for the Bayshore Community Redevelopment Agency when it discusses at its Tuesday meeting the propriety of two neighborhood murals: Keep them.

The two owners of the murals on Bayshore Drive in East Naples, who have been cited for code violations, have two words as well: What changed?

Finally, and most significantly, the president of the CRA board has three words that he intends to lob at Collier County commissioners over the whole process: Are we micromanaging?

The Bayshore CRA (full title: Bayshore-Gateway Triangle CRA) functions as an advisory board to Collier County commissioners, and CRA discussion Tuesday evening will drill down to whether the murals in question should be considered violations of county regulations.

The answer carries three alternatives:

The murals can remain.

The murals must be repainted exactly to the proposed design.

The murals must be painted over.

With either of the last two, noncompliance will slap a $1,000-a-day fine on the two owners, who are still sputtering.

"I left the last (CRA) meeting thinking that I was going to be OK. Then three weeks ago, I get this," said Amanda Jaron, of A. Jaron Fine Jewelry, of the code violation notice she received March 8 regarding the mermaid painting on her 3784 Bayshore Drive business.

The violation is leveled at two changes from the application she submitted to the county for it: One changed the objects floating around the mermaids from bubbles to diamonds; the other was the addition of a location hashtag by local artist Marcus Zotter.

Jaron says she's already painting over the hashtag, "and making a video of it while I do it." But considering the diamonds as advertising is overreaching, she says: It was more of a creative idea that came to her and Zotter as he was working on the piece.

"We don't even sell that many diamonds. We're in the business of designing jewelry."

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Diane Sullivan sits in front of the mural painted on her business, Naples Beach and Bay Realty, in the Bayshore Arts District of Naples on Monday, April 2, 2018. The Bayshore Community Redevelopment Agency is contesting the guidelines for two murals in the area, including this one, during a meeting Tuesday.(Photo: Nicole Raucheisen/Naples Daily News)

Further, she added, if the changes are made and the artist decided to add some star reflections to the bubbles, they could be considered pearls. Would that, she asked, create the same situation?

For Diane Sullivan, owner of Naples Beach and Bay Realty, the question is one of artistic freedom. Zotter also painted the walls of her building, at 3570 Bayshore Drive, and she says he moved beyond the design originally depicted to add more flowers and a butterfly. Then he decided to add a title: "The Gardenia."

"When you submit your applications you're told to give any direction the piece is going," she said. "But this is art. It's not like a sign where you have specifics."

Zotter elected to title his work, she said: "The building is not named The Gardenia. There's no business in it named The Gardenia."

Sullivan started an online petition to support keeping her mural, which spread through friends on social media such as Nextdoor, the neighborhood chat board. By Monday afternoon the petition at change.org had 910 signatures.

Judy Martin, who had forwarded the petition on her Queens Park neighborhood and its surrounding area, defended the murals.

"I love the mermaid. And the other one is flowers. If you look at Naples Botanical Garden down the street from there, this is nearly pointing the way," she said.

"I think their goal is more toward keeping it toward the arts" on Bayshore Drive, and she likes what she has seen.

"You go to half those buildings and you don't really know what they are. This makes a nice look, and I don't think they're in bad taste."

"That's a topic I'm going to bring up, not only at the CRA but at the county commissioners. Tuesday is our annual meeting with them, and I'm going to have a pitchfork and horns here."

CRA Director Debrah Forester, who was said to be preparing for its annual workshop with county commissioners, did not return two requests for information.

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Amanda Jaron stands in front of the mural painted on her business, A. Jaron Fine Jewelry, in the Bayshore Arts District of Naples on Monday, April 2, 2018. The mural is being contested by The Bayshore Community Redevelopment Agency during its meeting Tuesday.(Photo: Nicole Raucheisen/Naples Daily News)

The Bayshore CRA has appointed several artists and residents to act as an arts advisory committee. Gutierrez flat-out calls the murals paintings instead of murals in the classical, sweeping sense.

"So if it's not a mural, should we even be regulating it?" he asked. "Where do you go with that? And if it's art, isn’t art ultimately free speech? We don't need art police.

"For the longest time on Bayshore, we’ve been trying to catch an inch. And along comes Amanda, takes a crappy old building and makes a landmark out of it. These people paid for a professional artist to do these.

"We're saying we're an arts district. Our slogan is 'Creativity in bloom.' Where is the point where we're micromanaging what is supposed to be art?"

Gutierrez expressed exasperation with an attention to regulations rather than the spirit of the district. "By micromanaging are we going to chase away artists?

"It's going to get pretty warm in the commissioners office tomorrow."

He has his own feelings about the murals and singled out Sullivan's: "Is it an improvement? It was a commercial building; that’s fine. Now it’s a commercial building with cool flowers."

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Collier County commission

What: Joint workshop between the Board of County Commissioners/Community Redevelopment Agency Board and the CRA Advisory Boards (Immokalee and Bayshore/Gateway Triangle Community Redevelopment Areas)

When: 1-3 p.m. Tuesday, April 3

Where: Board of County Commissioners Chambers, third floor, Collier County Government Center, 3299 U.S. 41 E., East Naples

Bayshore-Gateway Triangle CRA

What: Regular monthly meeting; disposition of the status of two Bayshore murals is the first order of new business